It makes all the sense in the world. SAM and RUN are still used,... still relevant. They don't get a boost. The other jobs are not used by the community mostly and need an upgrade to make them accepted again, so they get it. It's that simple really. If you say that SAM is not relevant, I am not sure which game you are playing. Can another job easily solo the 4 and 6 step skillchains necessary to pop vagary NMs?

Saying Sam is relevant because it's used in only one situation (popping Vagary NMs) which wasn't really much of a thing even until this last patch made Vagary drops more relevant again... not really fair, I think, that's like saying War didn't need a buff (at least this month) since it's good in this month's Ambuscade.

Well let me give more examples then. Sam can make skillchains so easily for black mages to burst off of, which is crucial in Geas Feat and capacity parties. For those farming meywa plasm and HPB, SAM wrecks wildskeeper reives and delve (annoying that this still needs 3 to enter, but thats for another post.) Sams damage output is still insane and they have more tools to survive at close range than DRK. And before you make the arguement , I know that fighting at close range these days is suicidal, but smite will not fix that. All I'm saying is this: I believe that the problem SE was trying to address with smite is the fact that MOST parties will only accept SAM out of the pool of close-range DDs. In situations where people are still accepting close range melee, SAM is the first non-tank job they will accept. I do admit that all close range melee need to be given a break somehow: its just brutal in there !

The only situations people do accept non-tank melee is the easy content, and even for that, people usually will take Blu or Dnc over Sam because there are less stringent buff requirements to optimize them.

The only content where Sam is really used is Vagary that I can think of, haven't seen anyone using a Sam on Fete, on the hard ones, no melee, and even the easy ones you generally lowman, and Sam is generally meh without appropriate buffs and nukers and not worth wasting the party slots even on trusts to buff the Sam, is why you'd usually see a Blu or Dnc there, at least on Fenrir.

I haven't played Sam in ages, doesn't help that it didn't get access to Sulevia gear, the "asian set" was pretty bad, and making Valorous, while good stuff, seems wasteful for a job you almost never play, for me at least...

The thing is, the fix for SAM, and every other close range melee, is to make it more durable. The other 2-handers suffered from less attack potential than SAM, so smite was an effort to fix that. What we should ALL be crying for is for SE to make melee'ing at close range in general a situation you can actually survive.